Daimler on Friday said it will start building a battery plant as part of its planned $1 billion investment to upgrade its factory in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which has also started to produce a new sports utility vehicle, the GLE.

BMW's shares by fell 3.9 percent after the carmaker joined rival Daimler and a raft of suppliers who earlier this year blamed a global trade conflict and a price war triggered by new emissions rules for hurting profits.

As per the company statement, the brand has already prepared a cross-functional task force comprising customer service teams to support those customers whose vehicles have been damaged in the inundations that has affected Kerala.

The talks are being held with Beijing Electric Vehicle Co, or BJEV, in which Daimler took a stake of 3.93 percent earlier this year, Bloomberg reported, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter.

CEO Henrik Henriksson said Scania, which was one of the first truck companies to return to Iran after the EU lifted sanctions in early 2016, had cancelled all orders that it could not deliver by mid August as anything after would have been hit by the new sanctions.